Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Chelsea FC "History from pensioners to lions"

It's been a long time posting about my senior thesis. After first semester illustrating portraits of soccer players, I realized that I had too much portraits in my portfolio. So I changed my thesis, so it is not portraits anymore. But because I still wanted to continue on soccer theme, I decided to illustrate clubs in English Premier League (EPL). But I didn't want to illustrate typical illustration of clubs with their legend players, or managers with bunch of flowing stuff. It would be more like illustrations with some researches of the teams. First club to illustrate was Manchester United, but because I am still working on it, I post about second one, which is for Chelsea FC.

Chelsea's most recent crest (from wiki)

Chelsea is one of the popular and successful teams in EPL. It was founded in 1905 (it has been more than 100 years!) located in Fulham, London. Since Chelsea was founded, they have played in Stamford Bridge Stadium with great supporters. (Chelsea has fifth highest average of attendance in EPL; regularly over 40,000 supporters.) They won several winning cups from FA, championship, and EPL. (They won against Bayern Munch in the championship league final in 2012, and the game was CRAZY!) Chelsea is also ranked in 7 as the most valuable soccer club in the world. When I researched about their crest, I found something pretty interesting. Their first crest started with Chelsea pensioners.

pensioner's uniform is actually royal red, but in the crest, it is blue. In 1952, the pensioner was removed to change club's image, and in 1953, they put lion. So I started my sketches from there.